Truer Than My Own Name
by Ghostalker
Summary: Shawn's confession with the polygraph had unintended consequences he didn't even realize. Angsty Shules one-shot, set in Shawn's POV.


Hey everyone! This is my first Psych fanfic. Just a quick one-shot I had the idea for after watching that one episode about the British ambassador with the lie detector bit. Anyway, here it is, hope you like it.  
Disclaimer: I don't own Psych.

I had to tell her.

I _had to_.

And _no_, I'm not just being my usually over-dramatic, hammy self when I say that. Yes, I do like to steal the spotlight, cranking that bad boy all the way up to eleven and turning it forcefully upon myself. And yes, I do have a flair for the dramatic, honed by many years of watching movies and television shows with the gift of eidetic memory, and coupled with an innate childishness I've never been able to really outgrow.

I, Shawn Spencer, (pseudo) psychic detective, have a secret that I need to tell to the love of my life, the light in my otherwise dark and dreary world (except for Gus, but I can't tell either of them this. He'll be mad for being second place, and she'll be mad that Gus is in that list at all), the beautiful and intelligent Juliet O'Hara.

Did you follow all that? Good.

Anyway…

Where was I?

Oh yes! The _secret_.

If you look carefully I've already revealed the secret. That's right, that little word in parentheses up there. The word preceding "psychic". The word "pseudo". As in, I'm not really psychic.

Up until this point, exactly three people in the entire world have known this fact. My father, Henry Spencer, my best friend Gus, and myself. I need to make it four.

See, here's the thing. A while ago, when I was working a case for the British Ambassador (which was _awesome_, by the way. I still have trouble believing I got to cross _using diplomatic immunity_ off my imaginary bucket list), my cover was almost blown by an unfortunate (and yet still fortunate) photograph of myself snooping around the Ambassador's house. Long story short, I got hooked up to a polygraph machine, better known as a "lie detector."

If I can go off on a quick tangent here: the term "lie detector" is hilariously bogus. The machines are so unreliable that the tests have to be ordered by a judge, and only certain states will rule the results admissible in a court of law. But anyway, I was hooked up to one of these contraptions while Lassie grilled me about where I was that night.

The fun part is I was telling the truth, for the most part. Yes, I omitted a lot of the facts, like the fact that when I was talking to Gus, it was over wrist walkie, or that I was playing the ambassador's son's video games instead of my own, but the core of the story was the truth, which was why I was able to skate by that section.

And then something happened that I didn't really anticipate. My mouth started moving before my brain could intervene and tell it what to say and what not to say. Normally this sort of thing is, well, normal. Comes with being an overgrown child. But what I didn't expect was to blurt out how I felt about Juliet. That I loved her.

It was totally, completely true, and I will defend that to my last breath. And that's saying something coming from a guy who will scream and run from almost anything even remotely threatening. It was truer than my story about where I was that night. Truer than my own _name._ It was the truest thing I've said to date. Well, except anything I've said regarding pineapples being the greatest fruit in existence. That's a close call. Jury's still out on that one.

I know, I keep going off on tangents. But I promise, I'm getting there.

Here's the thing. Immediately thereafter, Lassie asked me if I was actually psychic. And in that moment I faced a choice: whether to lie to everyone in the room (except my dad and Gus) and keep up the charade and continue my lackadaisical and awesome life; or to tell the truth, come clean, and go to prison for a very long time.

It seemed like an easy choice at the time. But, being the aforementioned child that I was, it _would_ seem that way. So I took the easy way out and lied.

_But wait!_ You say. How did you get out of it if you were hooked up to a lie detector?

As I said, the things are notoriously unreliable. If you can keep calm and lie, you can beat a lie detector.

So I lied and told everyone I was psychic. And the lie detector told everyone my lie was the truth. Just like everything else I'd said in that little interrogation session.

Do you see yet where I'm going with this?

Juliet is the perfect girl. Not only is she smart, fun, funny, and beautiful, she can kick the asses of many grown men. But more than any of that, she _believes in me_. She's the only person besides Gus who has not only believed me, but believed _in_ me. That I was something more than just a slacker destined for the unemployment line. That I was what I claimed to be.

And therein lies my problem.

This beautiful, intelligent woman has not only lit up my world with, well, _her_, she continues to do so, and against all odds, she claims I light up her world, too. And now I've gone and lied to her. Oh, goodie.

So if you haven't yet grasped the truth of the matter, here it is; black and white, plain as day.

If I tell her my dirty little secret, it calls into question everything else I've said to her, both on that day in that room, and _everything else_. That's the problem with trust; it's so easy to break and so hard to rebuild.

But here's the thing; _everything_ I said in that room was true except the part about me being psychic. Everything. Especially the part about loving her.

I want to spend the rest of my life with her, and it's completely apparent to me. But I can't marry a girl I am keeping such a huge secret from. I couldn't keep it from her; it would kill me.

But if I tell her and she questions my love for her, and leaves because I broke her trust and her heart… well, that would kill me too.

Decisions, decisions.

In short, I'm an idiot, and my youthful indiscretions are now causing problems for the more mature, more adult me. Yes, I've actually started to mature a little bit, and I credit that to Juliet. Everything about her makes me better.

So younger Me made a stupid, rash decision, and older Me has to deal with the consequences.

What in the _hell_ do I do?

I hope that was satisfactory! Review if you liked it. I have more ideas brimming, and this is sort of an experimental "feel the water" sort of a thing.


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